Why Do We Count on Our Fingers?

We use our fingers to count because we have ten of them. Imagine you're playing with blocks, and you want to know how many there are, you might point to one finger for each block until all your fingers are used up. That’s why people started counting in groups of ten, like in the number 10 or 20, they’re just multiples of our fingers!

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Examples

  1. If you have five cookies and eat two, you still have three, just like the fingers you’re holding up to count them.

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